Pandora IPO values company at $2.56bn as launch share price hits $16

Mobile has fuelled the growth of the US music service, but will investors back it?

US streaming music service Pandora's IPO happens later today, with the company raising the price of its shares just before they went on sale.

Having originally planned a price of $7-$9 per share, the final pre-IPO price was $16 per share, valuing the company at $2.56 billion, and raising $235 million in cash for the company.

Pandora's stock will begin trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, with the music and technology industries alike eager to see how investors react once the stock goes live.

As we've written before, Pandora's rapid growth in the last couple of years has been driven by its mobile apps, which are generating a big chunk of the personalised radio service's usage.

The company now has 94 million registered users, with 34 million of those being classed as active. According to a recent SEC filing, Pandora users access the service from their mobile phones 60.3% of the time.